Just an update

Oh hello hello hello... Just a quick update to all... Here it is...

11th December 2007 (Tuesday) - Channel NewsAsia VISUAL+AUDIO training at E16L

12th December 2007 (Wednesday) - Publish ad on SGFORUMS for story2

13th December 2007 (Thursday) - Submit Proposal for STORY2

14th December 2007 (Friday) - Submit DRAFT2

I don't know if we could complete it in time but I guess all that matters is work for it....

Catch Uncleboy Pilot Episode on Channel NewsAsia, 1st January 2008. Time slot to be updated.

Do watch it and record it! Haha!

Report Update: Channel Newsasia's Comments

Email sent in on Tuesday, 4th December 2007, 1144hrs:

"Hi Team 6

The CNA team and I have watched your story.

Overall, we think your story and edit so far is very good. It helps that Uncle Boy is a very interesting character, hence it makes is watchable. For me, the best part was when he got drunk. It also helps that Uncle Boy is very comfortable and at ease with the production crew so the audience feel they are really getting to know the person.

The next step will be for you to work on revisions: additional filming and re-editing. Deadline 14 Dec!

We are looking to make the story even better and to give it a bit more depth, more context. For instance, while I understand he's lost his wife, everything due to his addiction, I don't know how he got addicted in the first place. and why he hasn't been able to kick his habit and why he hasn't gone for professional help. I also don't know why he's going to court. You need to explain his situation clearer. Go through the rushes carefully and see what bits you have left out can be included.

As you already have 5-6 tapes of rushes, your team doesn't need to do a lot of additional filming. Perhaps what you need to get is someone who can give a rational perspective on Uncle Boy. For instance, the church he goes to regularly. Can you try to interview a church member he is close to? I think just one more interviewee will suffice.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO BE ASKED AND FILMED:

- How often does Uncle Boy go to church?

- Is the church aware of his problems? Has the church offered to help? If so, in what ways? Or if the church is unable to help, has it referred Uncle Boy to other institutions?

This shoot should take about 1-2 hours or so, including general shots.

In addition, I know your team is setting up the web-blog and I would like your team to put it up as soon as possible and let as many people know so hopefully there will be feedback. Once there is any feedback from concerned members of public, we can even consider interviewing them.

Please start as soon as possible on the changes.

THINGS TO NOTE:

- please, please, PLEASE update me regularly on your production & post-production schedule. If you have arranged your shoot, let me know the venue and time so I can be there to observe and film.

- if you run into any problems getting the contacts for interviewees or filming issues of course let me know (early) so I can try to help

- any new scripts please EMAIL me. I want to see a proper audio/visual script

- lastly, if you have any questions or need help, PLEASE ASK. We will be around to guide/help you tell your story as well as it can be presented.Let me know if you have any further questions.

All the best!

Yueh Peng"

I Need Your Attention Please.

Friday, we will be having a meeting with Alina Heng.
Rosmawati is rumoured to be coming...hope she does.
We will update her on progress and explain to her about the hamburglar issue.


Thursday, Ros will show us the sketches of the sperm animation.
Easy yet challenging.


Now. Moving on to today's hamburglar episode.

Jannah booked Vista 1B infront of Faiz. They were at the scene itself and Jannah was the one who held the booking file. All that infront of his eyes. Gareth, Natz, Nora and Sammy were there too.

In 1B, there was no 2 pin adapters. Meaning, no sound. But, there was a hamburger lying around. So we used it since the firewire and all that were already plugged for us to use.

Later on, we moved to Vista A. Back then, we were encouraged to fill up empty Vistas. So natz, nora, jan and all that helped moved our stuff.

The hamburger moved with us.

In 1A. The hamburger and the dv deck didnt work. Tried and tested. Then we moved to 5A.
We started digitising with the hamburger since the tape and all that are already plugged in.

Moments later, Joe popped in...."Is that your hamburger?"
Adam replied. "No, the other room's"
Joe "Ok later put it back into that room"

Then Faiz popped in..."OOOhhh so that's where it is....ay what's your name ah? Lupa.(forgot in malay)

Adam...."Adam"

off he went to tell Faith. Eager to tell her that he found the hamburglar.
he wanna suck up i guess. Its what people do after they get reprimanded by their boss back then.

Faith then went in and lectured us....well mostly adam.


sure.


but then again, why on Earth were they running around searching for it when Jannah already booked 1B. Since they realised the hamburger from 1B is missing, why didnt they call up Jannah? Jannah is just next door. Did they search for us with their ass or something?


You watch out Faiz. It was us who nearly got you fired. It was your fault anyway. You don't curse us vulgarities you black bastard.

The script?

Well, adam here.

A quick update on the script.


I scrapped the script and am starting a new one. Now that i got to know UKB a lil more better, i can give the character in our story a better personality.

In a nutshell, the short film is an added bonus to our FYP. While many other teams are doing films as their main course, Naked Mole Rat is gonna be serving a short film as a side dish. The documentary would be the main course and as usual, a blooper section and behind the scene footage as dessert.


Unlike the documentary, the short would be a film inspired by the life of UKB instead of being a film based on the true life of UKB. Who knows, if audition goes well, UKB might not even be indian in the film. He could be Chinese, Malay or even ANG MOH.

Speaking of casting, we resorted to mandy.com. A few interested applicants replied but they are more interested to know the rate we are paying instead of the character they would be playing.
At this rate, mandy.com might not be a good avenue for the Naked Mole Rat.



We would be having a vote soon enough to decide the titles of our videos.

The documentary would either be called

MAN WITH NO MISSION or UNCLEBOY



The film would either be called

FERMENTED WATERS or MINDFARQUED.
both titles are still not in favour.
I might call it JUNIOR in tribute to UKB's dog or BAI QIU. That is UKB's favourite drink that costs only $1.80. 2 bottles to make him go out of control.

Another tentative side film is to be called 5 MINUTES.
No details to be released yet.



On that note.
I shall end this session of sharing here.
Time to transcript.

ADAM

Transcripting Mad

Venue: Jannah's House

Time: 3.30pm

Date: 11th November 2007, Sunday

We can't believe that transcripts are so tedious.... We had to listen, rewind, fastforward and type manually.... We only managed to get through 2 tapes only..... Furthermore, we had just 1 hamburger (an equipment to preview tapes) and that too was a 'loan' from khalis..... thanks!

Now, we just gotta wait for Alina to accept our equipment request to get 2 hamburgers out on Monday! Argh!

5 more days!!! About 5 more tapes to review.......

Lab Rats

Transcripts?



What is that?






Thanks to Alina's guidance, we managed to understand what transcripts is all about...

So, what is that really?


For documentary film makers, they have to go through process in which they have to write down every single dialogue heard on tape for some procedure stuff...



Just like scripts, this is one of it.... Documentary film makers don't really write scripts for real life people to say because whatever they shoot is based on real-time, real people...


You can't expect normal person on the street to write the scripts suddenly, right?


Transcripts usually appear when there is 1-on-1 interview because you gotta take down every single word the interviewer said.... So that there won't be any misinterpretation/misleading/misread...



This is all procedure in the industry...




We'll be doing the transcripts tomorrow at Jannah's place @ 2.15pm...

Channel Newsasia Project: 1

Hola!

Here's an update of our Project Uncleboy with Channel Newsasia...

The meeting went smoothly but we're kinda unorganized... That's okay, we like comments so that we could improve... Now, the project is all about people....

People whose life story may not be new to others but the person might be new to them...

Uncleboy is new to the eyes/ears/minds of people but his story isn't...

Many Singaporeans are victims of alcoholism, therefore our mission is to get these people down and dirty by brainwashing them about the dangers of alcohol addiction...

Uncleboy has a habit, but that doesn't mean there's no hope...

***

Channel Newsasia finds this story sexy...

A term used in the industry when they think the story is workable...

Thank god!

So, the deliverables:

By 16th November 2007,

1. Transcripts

2. Structure of documentary

We must keep in mind that this programme, I, Journalist, is segmented so keep it short and simple... It is all about the structure!

Part One of M.I.A

Okay, thank god for the Jalan Raya today if not, we won't be able to talk to Rosmawati...




FYI,
she's also part of this team but she's the M.I.A team mate of ours, together with Faraliza...
the latter is seriously M.I.A ...




Rosmawati called it quits with Daiso last week and she'll be back in action (hopefully)
We, The Naked Mole Rat, have delegated a task to her to draw animations of Sperm.




YES! Sperms... That will be part of our Uncle Boy project... The short film...
Let's cross our fingers, shall we?

Channel Newsasia Meeting

This entry is posted with high importance:




Date: 9th November 2007
Place: Vista A
Time: 1030 am

Day 5 of 5 Days

UKB reminded Lionel that he have half an hour more to go.

That was at 6.30am...

It's a day after UKB got heavily drunk...

His I/C was next to his bed...

***

Lionel said that he kept on talking till 5am to the point that Amachi can't stand it, she had to shut her bedroom door...

I've got 2 words...

GO SLEEP!

***

8.15am - just withdrew money, not out yet...

8.45am - should be in court by now already...

9.03am - just reached Subordinate Court...

***

We let UKB view the footages of last night's drunk-a-pade...

His reaction: Shocked, Scared and Surprised...

He don't remember a single thing that happened last night...

***

4pm

UKB got drunk

Again

because of

Rice Wine

or

Beh Choo


...



what can we say...........

will this project work....

we hope so....................

Day 4 of 5 Days

Taking care of a child can be tiring but dealing with a drunk man can be ultimately exhausting...

We had our first glimpse on UKB drunk...

In our face... In our tape... In our eyes... UKB is really depressed...

He's got one more day to spend his time at home... His main worry is Junior...

***

He went missing for a few hours and he told us before he left that he was gonna buy 4D ticket...

Few hours later, he came back with a bottle of Chinese Rice Wine, cup of Coke + rice wine...

He smelled bad.... So bad.... Drenched in alcohol...

We just filmed him from 4pm... He kept talking, singing, questioning and whining...

Junior didn't even come to him when he called for her... She knows...

***

UKB kept going up to 10th floor. TWICE.

Why?

He said he wanna get Lionel's guitar back... No one was at home...

He was so groggy.... Losing balance.... Lost his mind.... He's a goner....

***

About 3 hours later, Amachi got home and cooked for us dinner...

UKB was annoying and irritating when he's uber drunk...

He talked a lot... He repeated whatever he said...

At one point, he forgot where he was...

"I'm hungry, I'm gonna get something to eat... Then I go and sleep... Tired lah... Where's Mother? She says she's coming home at 5pm. Where is she? I'm hungry... I'm gonna eat something... On the road again... Tired lah.... I go and sleep..."

This kept going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on ........

***

How tiring!

Day 3 of Day 5

It's Sunday!

Jannah is not here with us, she had a huge family reunion today...
Work still has to go on...


We trailed Uncleboy today... We followed him to the ATM @ AMK Hub, Singapore Pools for his daily ToTo luck and his daily walks...


However, today, we dug deeper into Uncleboy's life... We followed him as he went to Church... Of course, we can't go in with him...



Today, he didn't get drunk!

Well, hopefully everything goes well tomorrow...
Uncleboy has been a very great man these 3 days...

Day 2 of 5 Days

It's an awesome Saturday afternoon.

We've got Natz to join us document Uncleboy (UKB) during these 5 days.... After yesterday's encounter with the popular man, she decided to tag along again... YAY!

The whole purpose of 5 Days is to document UKB in his last few days before going for court hearing. He had committed minor crime in the past such as "stealing a can of Tiger beer from 7 Eleven" and "scolding a policeman"... But UKB is a really nice man actually...

We reached his place at 2pm... Junior (his pet doggy) was barking all the way... The door was locked... Okay, at this point, we knew that he was still asleep... Few minutes later, UKB greeted us...

15 minutes later, we went down with him & Junior for an afternoon walk... Earlier in the morning, Junior had his walk... She needs at least 4 walks per day... To tell if Junior is happy, she'll shake her body and roll all over the floor...

We took a stroll around the neighbourhood. It's good for both Junior and UKB to mingle with other neighbours in the area...

***

Today, UKB is not drunk... Unlike the previous night, he was semi-drunk... We can see it...

We chilled at his place, watched TV with him and then, Junior and him got sleepy+tired...

At around 7.30pm, we left...

This was the peaceful side of UKB we saw today... As calm as the sea...
No alcohol talk, No jail talk, No suicide talk...

Project 5-days: 1 of 5 in progress...

We had a very long evening filming Project Five Days of Uncleboy's last few days at home before going off to prison...

He'll be sentenced on 6th November, Tuesday at 0900hrs, Subordinate Court.

We're doing all we can to capture Uncleboy's finest raw moments when he's alone with his Junior, under the block or at home, smoking and drinking...

The whole journey started off under the void deck opposite of Uncleboy's block. Filming like The Blair Witch Project... Like a pro... Oh, yes we are!

Here's how we do it:

We combed the whole Ang Mo Kio Block 314 to 343 looking for Uncleboy... Went to about 6-7 coffeeshops in Ang Mo Kio where Uncleboy always hang out... It was like a 24-hour manhunt, every uncles and aunties at the coffeeshops looked at us, some kids even asked if this is for TV...

From 2115hrs to 2200hrs.... Close to an hour search for Uncleboy.... We almost gave up our search for him.... So, we went back to Uncleboy's block....

And, guess what?

Jackpot!

Uncleboy was right under our noses all along... He was there, behind his block, with Junior and his alcohol... There, we saw him chatting with another man who was a regular jailbird...

You couldn't imagine our happiness and luck... Natz and Nora tagged along with us today... Uncleboy seemed really happy to see all of us.... There were Lionel, Adam, Shaggy, Natz and Nora and I... We can tell that he is drunk but he knows how to control his drunkardness...

Here, pictures for the night...

Junior was there with Uncleboy, too!

The only worry for Uncleboy is if Junior dies when he goes to prison...

We love Junior like our own dog, too!
He didn't bark at us anymore!

Yay!

Naked Mole Rats signing off!